Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey
By Roger Ebert
All Kevin Clash ever wanted to do was make puppets. That came even before he fixated on Muppets. One day, he had an inspiration so urgent that it required cutting up his father’s coat. The result was a nice enough puppet, but when Kevin emerged from his creative frenzy, he realized that his father might have stern words for him. Called in, trembling, to the old man, all he heard was: “Next time, ask.”
Clash was born into a large middle-class family in an African-American suburb of Baltimore, and perhaps found puppets and Muppets a way to express his otherwise quiet, shy personality. Using sheets on his mother’s clothesline as a backdrop, he put on shows for the neighborhood kids. He was picked on as a boy who “played with dolls,” but that changed after he won a job on a local TV show in Baltimore. Read More
-